


Everything I Could Never Tell You

by YinAndYangOnIce



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Sort of? - Freeform, based off of a prompt thing, military?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1347925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YinAndYangOnIce/pseuds/YinAndYangOnIce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hey this is based off of a prompt thing that is floating around Tumblr if I find it, I'll link it in the notes, but anyway, I thought of an idea on how to finish it and it kind wrote itself :) Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything I Could Never Tell You

“Here,” Zayn said, holding out a CD sleeve with a CD set in it just as they were walking out of their very last English class, the very last class at all, actually, of their high school careers. “Think of it as a graduation present.”

Niall turned and looked at the CD, held in his friend’s fingers with a grip a little too strong for just a casual, graduation present, but at the time, he didn’t really take notice of it. He just grinned at him and took the sleeve from his fingers. “Aw, thanks, mate!” he said, turning it over, even though the case was blank. “We can listen to it on the way home. I-“

“No,” Zayn snapped suddenly, drawing Niall’s eyes up to his in confusion, because Zayn was one of the most quiet and laid-back guys he knew, and he’d never seen him this tense in all of the four years he’d known him. Even as the single syllable left his mouth, Zayn seemed to wince apologetically. “Sorry, just… No. Don’t listen to it. Yet. Wait until after graduation, okay?”

Niall raised an eyebrow, at him, glancing back down at the CD case with curiosity. The front cover had a white sheet of paper slid into the front of it so the front side of the CD wasn’t visible to him at the time, but even then, there didn’t seem to be anything special about it. “Um… okay.”

“Seriously, Niall, I mean it,” Zayn said, again with a commanding tone in his voice that almost bordered on desperation, but just like the stiff, trembling fingers, Niall didn’t really notice this until later on. “You have to promise me. Don’t listen to this until after we graduate.”

Niall laughed, more out of the discomfort of his good friend suddenly acting so strange than anything else, but he nodded. “Okay, dude, I promise,” he said, sticking his pinky out for emphasis. Zayn glanced down at it, then back up at him with his dark eyebrows raised, as if to say, Dude, we’re graduating tomorrow. Niall just shrugged. “It’s just strengthening the promise, bro, there’s no harm in it.”

Zayn smiled ruefully and nodded, reaching out and linking his own pinky with Niall’s outstretched one. “Thanks, man. I promise, you’ll understand once you listen, but for now, please wait.”

“Okay, Z, sure,” he said, grinning and carefully placing the CD sleeve in the outer pocket of his backpack before throwing an arm around Zayn’s shoulders. “So, graduation, huh?”

“Yeah,” Zayn replied lowly, eyes lowered to the ground, winding his own arm around Niall’s waist and squeezing just one the right side of too tight. “Graduation.”

~ ~ ~

 

There were quite a few things Niall was good at. He was good at guitar and considered himself a slightly-better-than-adequate singer, he was good at statistics, but horrible at any other type of math, and he could recite every single line to Pitch Perfect verbatim at any given time. But one thing that he had always, always lacked was patience. And with that, he also lacked restraint. 

The entire car ride home, his eyes kept darting down to the meshy, see-through side pocket of his worn-out backpack at every red light, where the CD was sitting and tormenting him, calling his name. 

He repeatedly told himself No, he’d promised Zayn that he’d wait until after graduation, and that’s what he would do. That was the right thing to do. On top of that, he pinky swore, which, despite his being eighteen years old, was still the highest form of promise he dared to make, because a) those were ironclad, and b) contracts frightened him slightly if they were for anything greater than the “Terms and Conditions” on his iTunes (he was and would remain on his parents’ cell phone plan until at least after he graduated college.) 

So he resolved himself to patience, he wasn’t even more than twenty-four hours that he’d been asked to wait by his friend, and that was something he could do for Zayn, for being such a good friend for more than four years and saving his ass from failing calculus harder than anyone had ever failed at anything. 

He made it through the rest of the car ride and was able to distract himself for a good two hours playing Halo with some of his Louis and Liam, and after that, his parents had told him that they were going out to dinner as just their family to celebrate his graduating, because by tomorrow, his grandparents and aunt and uncle would all be there to watch him walk for his diploma and there would be a lot of overall family talk and no doubt several arguments, so they wanted to make sure it was just him, his parents, and his brother and her fiancé for the night.

He really was sufficiently distracted, in fact he had pretty much forgot about the CD save for just the tiniest inkling of something needling in his brain that kept popping up while he was trying to enjoy his Dali chicken from P.F. Chang’s. 

The CD only resurfaced in Niall’s mind when he was walking back in through the garage and his father had grabbed his backpack, a dopey smile on his face, and said, “Hey, good thing you’ll never have to use this ratty, old thing again, eh, son?” He laughed, dropping the bag unceremoniously on the ground and at that moment, Niall remembered the CD sleeve in the side pocket and went to get it. Better to keep it in the house anyway, he told himself. Safer, less likely to be kicked around. I’ll just put it in a drawer and take it out tomorrow.

That idea lasted all of an hour, as he thought about the CD lying in his desk drawer all through his shower, because the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Zayn was a pretty open guy, didn’t do secrets or drama or any of that stupid high school shit; it was probably why Niall liked him so much. When they had first met back in their eighth year, they immediately bonded over music, which they both loved, and didn’t hesitate to share new songs and albums they found with each other almost immediately. So why, now, of all times, was he making him promise to wait to hear this CD? His resolved dwindled and finally puttered out and he was diving for his desk and the CD case before he even put a shirt on. 

Shit, dude, you pinky swore, Niall berated himself as he stuck his thumbs under the thin flaps of the CD case and cracked it open. I don’t care, he replied. 

When he flipped the top cover off of the case, he noticed for the first time that the white piece of paper that had blocked his view of the CD had writing on it in Zayn’s thin, calculated scrawl. “DO NOT LISTEN TO UNTIL AFTER GRADUATION!” it warned, which only registered a blip on Niall’s moral radar. He knows how impatient I can be, Niall reasoned with himself. He’ll understand.

His eyes fell on the disc itself, which also had the same writing over the face in a thick, black marker. Niall’s eyes read the words once, twice, three times, his throat suddenly dry.

EVERYTHING I COULD NEVER TELL YOU

Niall just sat, staring at the CD and the letters that promised something, though he wasn’t sure what. He had a feeling he knew, but he wasn’t really sure if that was actually intuition, or just what he wanted it to be. He was hesitant to do this now, this seemed a lot more important than it had a few seconds ago. But at this point, his heart was drumming its fingers against his ribs and his mind was rushing with such curiosity, he couldn’t resist the temptation anymore.

He walked over to his computer and opened it, actually stopping for a second to check if his computer even had a disk drive. It did, but he’d never had a use for it before so he wasn’t sure at first. 

He took the disk delicately out of the case, thumb and middle finger stretched and holding it from opposite sides, trying to avoid touching the underside. He slid the disk into the drive and listened to his laptop purr as it read the disk. In a few seconds, his iTunes player popped up automatically, a list of the songs on the CD displayed as well, but he averted his eyes from it as best he could, not wanting to spoil it and get his hopes up or have them dashed, catching one of the songs’ names by mistake and feeling his cheeks heat up in response. He tapped the space bar, starting the playlist, and minimized the window so that he wouldn’t see it anymore.

The first few notes of the first song played through the tinny speakers of his laptop: Something About the Way You Look Tonight, by Elton John. He swallowed heavily, though his dry throat offered no give and his heart was beating too fast, it felt like his chest was throbbing. 

He listened to the song, barely moving, just staring at his computer and his desktop background, which was him and Louis, Harry, Liam, Zayn, and Josh smiling stupidly at the camera, throwing up peace signs or obscene gestures, from when they’d all gone on their senior trip to France. Zayn had his arm around Louis, who was on Niall’s left side and he was sticking his tongue out, looking to be in the middle of a laugh. Niall’s fingers itched to click open the music player, to see what was coming next, but he forced himself not to. 

The song ended and he waited for a few seconds in silence, ears ringing softly with the absence of music in the room. Then, Michael Bublé started playing, Just Haven’t Met You Yet.

So there’s definitely a theme here, Niall thought numbly, fingers fisted in the fabric of his duvet. Love songs.

He honestly never would’ve known, would never have guessed, that Zayn felt this way. He’d met him in the last few months of their eighth year and had been good friends ever since, and in that time, he’d never seen Zayn with anyone who could be a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, for that matter. And Niall wouldn’t say he was obsessive about it, but he had been paying attention.

Zayn was one of those friends that just so happened to be in most of his classes and as such they frequently partnered up for projects or sat next to each other when they could. He sometimes drove Zayn home when he needed a ride, but besides that, not much else. They weren’t best friends, they’d never gone over each other’s house or hung out outside of school, but Niall knew he could talk to the guy about anything. All except, of course, his itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny, little crush on Zayn. 

Zayn was ridiculously, stupidly attractive, with warm, whiskey-colored eyes that crinkled at the corners when he laughed (which was also cute), framed by eyelashes miles long, and a beautiful face, cheekbones that could cut glass and jet black hair. He was smart, he’d tutored Niall after school in calculus all through junior year without complaining once, in fact he offered. He was always doodling in the margins of his notebook and yet somehow was able to answer the questions right every time a teacher noticed and tried to catch his off guard. He was nice, if not shy, and easy to talk to and fun to be around and it was somewhere in the middle of their sophomore year that Niall realized he wouldn’t particularly mind hanging out with Zayn outside of school or seeing what his room looked like or holding his hand or kissing his face every once in a while.

As if on cue, the song changed and I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles started playing. He didn’t notice when he’d done it, but Niall had grabbed one of his pillows and was squeezing it in his lap, just staring at the wall and listening to the songs.

He let song after song flow through his ears, each more sweet and romantic and cheesy and wonderful than the last. Every so often he would psych himself out and think that maybe he was misinterpreting all these songs and Zayn was just telling him he was a good friend or something, but then the next song would start and he would realize that there was no way he was using Whitney Houston to tell Niall that he’d been a good pal.

He was halfway through Let Me Love You when he started wondering if maybe he should text or call Zayn, respond to this in some way. Would they be boyfriends then? No, he’d probably ask Zayn on a date first. Or would Zayn ask him out? Is Zayn telling him to ask him out, or trying to say that he wants to ask Niall out but is too nervous? 

And why had he given this to him and told him to listen to it after graduation? Why hadn’t he asked him out before and not at the end of the year? Maybe Zayn had wanted to start this relationship after they were officially done with high school, so they could have a mature, adult relationship without all of the high school mixed in. He remembered Zayn telling him once that he couldn’t wait to be out of high school, couldn’t wait to move on to bigger things. 

By the time the playlist ended and he clicked open the library, pressing repeat so the whole thing would play all over again, he had resolved not to text or call Zayn about this. He would see him tomorrow anyway, and this is the type of thing that should be talk about face-to-face, not face-to-screen-to-screen-to-face. Instead, he just lay back and shut his eyes, listening to the songs over and over again, drinking in their words and reveling in them. 

He lost track of time and before he knew it, the CD was running through its fifth rotation and his father was banging on his door, telling him to shut the music off, it was one-thirty AM, and he was graduating tomorrow, for Pete’s sake. 

He called back to his father, apologizing and moving to shut off his light, but not before reaching for his headphones and sticking them in the jack of his computer, letting the music fill his head and block out everything else. 

Niall could hardly sleep, mulling different words and sentences around in his head hundreds of times, trying to think what he should say when he saw Zayn tomorrow. He eventually did fall asleep, a smile on his face and his heart swollen, The Goo Goo Dolls crooning softly into his ears.

~ ~ ~

 

Graduation day was, as expected, a whirlwind, he barely had time between greeting his family and getting his cheeks pinched and his uncle slapping his jovially on the back and helping them set up the rooms they’d be staying in and catching up with them, and before he knew it, he was draping himself in the gross, yellow gown his school had supplied him with (their colors were black and gold, but that didn’t change the fact he looked like a giant lemon) and letting his mom fuss with his hair and they were off, headed to his high school for the last time. 

His fingers drummed nervously on his thigh the whole ride, feeling light-headed from all the things that were supposed to happen in the next few hours. He was supposed to graduate, become a bonafide adult, and maybe, possibly get a boyfriend before the day was out. He was a little embarrassed to admit he was most excited about the lattermost thing on his list than anything else, but hey, he was only human.

His nan saw him fidgeting and smiled, reaching over and taking his fingers in her frail ones. “Are you ready, dear?” she asked and Niall turned to her, grinning.

“As I’ll ever be.”

~ ~ ~

 

Niall didn’t see Zayn at graduation. He asked all of his friends and some people he didn’t even know if they’d seen him yet, but they all said no. He stood on his tiptoes, trying to catch a glance of his dark, quiffed head of hair, but all he could see was a sea of ugly, yellow caps. Too soon, they were being ushered into their seats and by then, Niall was too preoccupied by having suddenly realized, Oh, shit, I’m graduating, to think about potential boyfriends.

He listened to the speeches and clapped when people got their awards for being super-duper-extra smart or good at sports and then they were calling the names. 

They called the names by row, that is, they called names alphabetically and each student in the row of chairs stood up at the same time and waited, and once that row had all been given their diploma, the next row stood up. Niall’s last name, Horan, came before Zayn’s in the alphabet (Malik,) so by the time he had gone up, gotten his diploma, given the principal a bear hug to get laughs out of his former classmates, and gone back to his seat, the next row was already up and blocking his view behind him. Damn.

He heard Zayn’s name called and he craned his neck, trying to see him, but there were so many people and so many of the same, stupid, yellow gown, he never caught sight of him. 

They turned their tassels and threw their caps and Niall lost his in the fray (guess he’s not getting the deposit back on that) and then it was mass chaos, newly graduated, semi-adults running around and hugging their friends and families and screaming and cheering and Niall knew there would be no chance of him finding Zayn now. He thought to text him, but then his family were suddenly by his side and his mother and grandmother were crying, his father looked like he’d spent a few minutes drying his own eyes, and he was being hugged left and right and he decided that he’d just have to go see him the next morning.

He’ll be busy with his own family anyway, Niall thought as he was jostled by the noogie his uncle was giving him. I can just stop by his house tomorrow. I’ve got time.

~ ~ ~

 

Niall knew it was sort of rude to show up at eleven AM on a Saturday, especially after having just graduated and wanting to sleep in for days to make up for all the early mornings high school put you through, but he couldn’t wait. He woke up at seven after listening to Zayn’s CD eight more times and finally closing his eyes at three AM, and couldn’t go back to sleep, so he just sat and listened to his CD some more and cleaned his room, which was honestly only because he had so much nervous energy that if he didn’t do something, he might explode. He sat in the kitchen and ate breakfast with his mom, eyes darting repeatedly to the digital clock on the stove, trying to stall as long as he could but excitement making it impossible.

“Are you all right, love?” his mother asked. “Why are you up so early anyway? Shouldn't you be sleeping your summer away?” She smiled her warm, teasing smile and Niall just shrugged. He told his mom everything, they were close in that way, but he decided he’d tell her after the fact so he wouldn’t get too nervous about it.

That plan sort of backfired on the drive over, though. He knew this was sort of a sure thing, or at least it should be. There was no way he was reading too much into things… right? For Christ’s sakes, the boy had given him a CD filled to the brim with love songs. That was definitely a romantic gesture. Right?

But there was, of course, the part of telling Zayn that he’d listened to it and that he felt the same way and despite his A in English, he wasn’t always the best with words. He sat in his car parked in front of Zayn’s house for fifteen minutes, alternating between tapping the steering wheel and squeezing it so hard his knuckles became translucent before he finally mustered up the courage to get out of the car. He had the CD Zayn had given him clutched in his hand as he walked up the cobblestone walkway; he wasn’t sure why exactly he brought it, just felt like he needed to. Maybe they could play it as background music as they made out or something, whatever.

He stood in front of the Maliks’ front door for another four minutes before he was finally able to lift his arm and ring the doorbell. Before long, the door was opening and a pretty woman with dark hair and a kind smile was opening the door. She must be Zayn’s mother, he thought. He was the spitting image of her.

“Hello?” she asked him, smile wide and crinkling at the corners of her eyes, just like her son.

“Um, hi, yeah, uh…” he stuttered over his words, suddenly more nervous than ever and he tried not to grimace as he noticed his palms starting to sweat. “A-Are you, um. Is Zayn home?”

Mrs. Malik’s eyebrows raised a little, caramel eyes taking on a hint of something sort of sad, though it was masked with an overall look of confusion and a polite smile. “No, dear, I’m sorry. He’s not.”

“Oh, um…” Niall had not planned for this. “Do you know when he’ll be back?” 

This time, the sadness in her eyes was a lot more evident and she shook her head and by now, Niall was becoming a little worried. “No, hon, I’m sorry, I-“ her eyes suddenly fell from his face and down to the CD sleeve, gripped tightly in his hand. Something like realization sparked in her face and she said, “Oh, you must be Niall. Are you Niall?”

Niall, surprised, nodded. He followed her gaze to what was held in his hand and it clicked, his cheeks reddening quickly as he realized that she probably knew what he was here for. When he looked back up, he was confused to see a sad smile on her face.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she said, voice sincere and heavy and Niall was so confused and kind of worried. “I really though Zayn would’ve told you.”

“Told me what?” Niall asked, blood running cold with concern.

“He left the night before graduation,” she said, smile falling. “To enlist.”

~ ~ ~

 

Niall was numb the entire drive home. His stomach churned and swirled as everything clicked into place. Why he hadn’t told him before graduation, why he had asked him to listen to the CD only after graduation. He couldn’t believe this was happening. Zayn gave him this beautiful gift and for the first time in three years, Niall actually felt like he had a chance with him. He’d liked this guy for three, whole years and he finally had a reason to go for it, and Zayn was gone, having slipped through his fingers like sand. 

He tried hard not to feel betrayed, knew that enlisting was a huge decision to make and high school crushes definitely came second to protecting your country, but he still just hurt so much. Not because Zayn had given him this information and then left, but because he left at all. 

When he got home, his mother immediately noticed his change in demeanor. He broke down immediately and told her, told her about the crush he’d had pretty much all through high school and never being brave enough to do anything about it, about the CD, about thinking he had all the time in the world to make this happen, about having that snatched away from him before he could even truly enjoy it, about his heart falling out of the bottoms of his feet, standing on the front stoop of his house and looking at the boy’s mother, who he knew must be hurting exponentially more than he was and felt awful for feeling so hurt, about missing his chance.

Niall’s mother pulled him into her arms and held him while he cried, petting his hair and telling him it would be all right, that it’s not too late, that he’ll get his chance. But he knew she didn’t know that. She could never know that. Because he knew what enlisting meant.

Enlisting mean that sometimes, you didn’t come back.

~ ~ ~

 

Niall pored over his astronomy textbook miserably, reading but failing to absorb a single word from the page. He hated this class, he sucked at it, no matter how hard he studied he was barely scraping by. He wasn’t sure why he even took this class, he was a music major, for crying out loud, but it was a science credit that he needed and he had stupidly assumed that the class was going to be about stars and planets and all that. Wrong.

He was a sophomore in college now, studying music and minoring in English in London. The school was nice and he loved the location, the bright lights, the music, the strange people, he loved it all.

It had been two and a half years since he’d stood on the Maliks’ doorstep and felt his world come down around him. He never really got in contact with Zayn, because… well, there were a lot of reasons.

He felt horrible asking his mother, who must be worried out of her mind every single day about how her son was doing, for a number to call or an address to write to. He didn’t know why, he just felt like he didn’t really deserve it. She offered to exchange email addresses with him, so she could update him on how Zayn was if she ever got any information, but she never emailed him and he hadn’t expected her to. He wasn’t entirely sure if Zayn wanted to be in contact with him. Maybe the CD was a way of severing ties, leaving the past behind him with no loose ends left untied. Niall wasn’t sure what he would even say, and besides, even after all this time, he still thought that what he wanted to say should be face-to-face, though he’d probably give anything for a chance to say it at all.

The final, and probably worst, reason was that Niall, selfishly, was too afraid to start contact with Zayn, finally sort of have him back only for him to get a letter or a call one day telling him Zayn would not be coming home. He hated himself for this, made himself sick over it, but he couldn’t help it.

Despite never getting in touch with Zayn, there wasn’t a day that went by that Niall didn’t think about him. His CD still sat in his computer, had sat there for two and a half years and had been played hundreds of times. Niall had downloaded the playlist to his iPod and listened to it whenever he was sad, or stressed, or just plain missed Zayn.

He still felt horrible missing him so much, he’d never had him in that way to begin with and every time he missed him, he thought about Mrs. Malik, whose son was gone and might never come back. Sometimes he wished he’d emailed her after all, to offer some comfort, but he wasn’t sure how much it would help and besides, it would be strange for him to get in touch after all this time. 

Niall groaned, leaning back in his chair, feeling the vertebrae in his back crack with the new movement, and letting his head loll behind him. He had been sitting in this little coffee shop for over three hours. He was never going to learn this shit today, he knew it, so he shut his book was a muffled fwap and reached for his coffee cup, remembering just a second too late that it was empty and had been for the last forty-five minutes. Maybe if he got some more coffee, his motivation would be born anew and maybe he could actually retain some information. He looked towards the barista counter, then let his eyes travel down the line, trying to gauge how long he would have to wait, when his heart suddenly shot into his throat.

He was here. 

He was here, in this shitty, second-rate, Starbucks-knock-off coffee shop in the middle of Manhattan. 

He was here, his hair shorter and shaved at the sides, his body looking more muscular and strong, his face tanner and lined with the beginnings of a beard and drawn and a little more tired-looking than when he’d last seen him.

He was here, he had crutches propped up under both his arms and when he took a step forward in line, it was with a heavy limp that Niall knew immediately would probably never heal, but it didn’t matter, he was here, he was alive, and he was just here.

There was too much blood rushing in his ears for him to hear anything, but by the way everyone turned to stare at him as he got up, he guessed his chair had made a huge clatter as it scraped across the floor when he leapt to his feet.

Every pair of eyes in the shop turned to him with the racket, including Zayn’s, whose eyes bulged out of his head and whose dark skin became considerably paler when he saw him. “Niall?” his lips stretched around his name, eyebrows furrowing as if he couldn’t believe it, and Niall’s every nerve ending was firing on all cylinders as he rounded the table, nearly tripping over his backpack as he did and gaining speed the more ground he gained. 

Before he knew it, he was standing right in front of Zayn, who was staring at him with wide, alert eyes, his jaw fallen open. 

Niall was just standing there and he knew he had dozens of eyes staring at him but he didn’t care, and even if he did, he couldn’t stop himself as his arm lifted into the air and he slapped Zayn across the face. 

A collective gasp and a few cries of surprise rose from the onlookers and Niall could relate, he was horrified with himself, but he was running completely on auto-pilot, mind and body disconnected as he did what he did next, which was throw his arms around the man in front of him.

Niall tried to hold down the whimpers that were threatening to force their way out of his throat as he held onto Zayn, who was warm and breathing and alive in his arms. There was blood running through the veins right underneath this skin, something Niall spent so many sleepless nights worrying about. He still smelled like his did in high school, a musky cologne he could never place that he hadn’t even known he’d noticed back then until now. 

He knew Zayn must be shocked and confused and probably a little scared, just like every other patron of this coffee shop that he’d decided to terrorize today, but it wasn’t his fault, really.

“Niall?” Zayn said again, breath hot and alive right in his ear and on his neck.

“I missed you, you piece of shit,” he muttered into Zayn’s t-shirt, and wow, if that wasn’t the least romantic thing he’s ever said, but apparently it didn’t matter, because he felt another pair of arms circling him and pulling him closer, and he felt one of Zayn’s crutches sort of falter and lose its grip from under his arm as he awkwardly tried to balance himself so Niall stood up straighter, forcing his trembling knees to lock so he could hold both of them up. 

“I missed you, too,” Zayn whispered into his hair, Niall having always been a few inches shorter than him, and Niall had dreamed of seeing Zayn again, but no scenario he’d ever imagined had been quite as good as this.

“Um, sirs?” a voice called and Niall glanced up over Zayn’s shoulder, remembering that they weren’t alone and they were actually obstructing the good patrons from their subpar coffee. A mousey-looking barista was staring up at them with wide, blue eyes, looking a little scared. “I’m, like, glad that you’re happy to see each other, I guess, but you’re kind of in the way of the line.”

“Sorry,” Zayn said, standing up and Niall held on to him until he got his crutch situated again. The man turned to look at Niall, mouth already forming words, when Niall interrupted him.

“Let’s talk somewhere else.”

 

 

They walked outside and Niall fussed over Zayn silently, not sure if he was allowed to ask about the limp or how far he could walk or anything like that, just left floundering internally and following Zayn until they walked into the entrance of a park just a few blocks away and the other man plopped himself down onto a bench, moving his crutches to the side. Niall followed suit, sitting down and watching Zayn sideways as he settled himself. At that time, Niall noticed the red mark on his cheek and winced.

“I’m really sorry I slapped you,” Niall said sheepishly and Zayn looked over at him, smirking. His hand drifted absently to his cheek.

“Yeah, that was surprising,” he said, chuckling. “I always knew seeing you again would be like a slap in the face, but…” He trailed off, just smiling at Niall now.

“God, I don’t even know why I did that,” Niall said, dropping his head into his hands. He knew why. Niall was still pretty pissed about the confess-then-run-off-to-save-our-country thing. But he didn’t want to mention that. Not yet.

“You always did have a flair for the dramatic,” Zayn said. They sat in silence for a few seconds before Zayn spoke up again. “But all attacks on my face aside, it’s good to see you again.”

Niall sat up, glancing through his parted fingers at Zayn before letting his hands drop. “It’s good to see you, too,” he said. “In fact, it’s amazing.” Zayn laughed, eyes still crinkling, like always, dark cheeks coloring a little.

There was quiet then, a long, pregnant, awkward quiet as Niall tried to find the words he’d wanted to say for upwards of five years now. He’d imagined this more times than he could count, but right now, he was mute.

“I, um… listened to the CD you gave me,” he said finally. He waited for a reaction, he’d wondered this whole time whether Zayn would even remember the CD he’d given him, remember what he apparently felt for him. To his relief, Zayn’s cheeks turned bright red and he chuckled nervously.

“Oh, um, yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Nice.”

“Yeah,” Niall replied. “I didn’t wait until after graduation. I listened to it the night you gave it to me. Sorry.” Why are you telling him this?!

“I had a feeling you would,” Zayn said, smiling to himself. “It wasn’t really a big deal.”

“But I pinky swore,” Niall said and wow, it is apparently impossible for him to say anything intelligent with Zayn around. Zayn, of course, laughed. There was another pause. “I, um, I really liked it.”

Zayn’s eyes lit up a little and he grinned. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Niall replied. “I was really happy, actually. I don’t know if your mom told you, but I went to your house the day after graduation to try and find you. But by then, you were already…”

“Yeah,” Zayn said, smiling apologetically. “I’m really sorry I never told you.”

“That you liked me or that you were enlisting?” Niall asked.

“Both,” he replied, tilting his head back and looking up at the sky. “I wanted to tell you really badly, that I liked you, but I was going to go away and it didn’t seem to make sense.”

“But you did tell me,” Niall said. 

“Yeah, but I was a wimp about it,” Zayn said, laughing at himself. “I waited until I was thousands of miles away to tell you, so I wouldn’t be there if you said no. I-“

“I wouldn’t have,” Niall blurted out, blushing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to-, I just. I wouldn’t have. But sorry, go on.”

Zayn didn’t for a moment, eyes blinking rapidly as he looked at the sky. Niall wondered what knowing that meant to Zayn now.

“Well, I was way too shy to say anything back then anyway,” he said. “But I thought you should know. I didn’t want to leave without you knowing, you know, just in case…” He trailed off, but Niall didn’t need him to finish the thought, nor did he want to.

Just in case, you didn’t come back.

There was another pause. “So you really would’ve gone out with me back then?” Zayn asked.

Niall snorted. “Are you kidding? In a heartbeat.”

Zayn laughed again in that self-depreciating way he had before. “I don’t know whether I want to laugh or cry, hearing that.” He shook his head, chuckling. “God, I was so crazy about you.”

Niall felt his heart nearly burst as it pinballed around in his chest, and he swallowed, throat dry, palms wet. “Was?” he asked.

“Am,” Zayn corrected, then seemed to stop and think about it again. “Could be.”

“Okay,” Niall said, slapping his thighs and then standing up. He reached out his hand for Zayn to grab. “No better time to find out than the present. I’d like to formally ask you to get some coffee with me. But not at that place we just left. I think everyone is terrified of me in there.”

Zayn laughed, staring at his outstretched hand in wonder. He smiled after a long moment, taking it. “I’d like that a lot. And maybe dinner after that?”

Niall grinned and nodded, squeezing Zayn’s hand in his own. 

Good, he thought. I’ll need a lot of time to say everything I could never tell you.


End file.
